..not very much that they can see is wrong…!

i spoke with the vet yesterday, and the biopsy revealed some slight water retention in his abdomen, some ecoli in his stomach fluids, and mild inflammation in his bowel, none of those things were extreme enough to cause the extent of vomiting he’s experiencing. no cancerous cells were found, and nothing indicating any infection.

our next step is keeping him on a cocktail of medications for 10 days - zantac, cerenia, metronidazole, antepsin and a pink one whose name escapes me!  if he’s successful in keeping down his ID for 10 days, then we will wean him slowly off of all of the meds - but if he continues to vomit, then we’ve to proceed with an endoscopy, as it’s pretty much the only option left.

from putting him on them last night, we’ve not had any vomiting, and he does seem a bit brighter - still absolutely starving! but there’s not much we can do but keep him on a couple of ID spoons a day…

will let you know how he’s keeping…hopefully the pills will help again..

So glad that they did not find anything sinister. Keeping my fingers crossed that the cocktail of meds will do the trick and help him keep some food down. Beaming Loki positive vibes.

Kate

Poor Loki.  Hope he is very soon on the mend for good.

Joyce

That’s good news they haven’t found anything more serious but must still be very frustrating for you.
Fingers crossed for the new meds, hugs to Loki
Marie

Good to hear Loki is doing well on the meds and that nothing serious showed up. Here’s hoping for a full recovery from here on in.

Gald they both liked their new bowl stand too!
Malc

well, after a 2 days of consistent spluttering, and sleepless nights staying up with him, we came to the conclusion that while the medication was helping, it wasn’t really doing very much good, and loki should be booked in to the vet sooner rather than later.

i spoke with our usual vet, and told her that we’d noticed that his throat was bulging, and we could physically see the food moving up and down his throat as he went to vomit, then swallowed it again. however, on this note, and through further discussion, we came to the conclusion that, in addition to the occasional vomiting, loki was mainly regurgitating his food - which would explain why he would bring up meals he’d eaten over 8 hours previously.

he’s going in tomorrow for a barium meal, then an xray, as the potential diagnosis is megaesophogus- which, as it sounds, would mean that his eusophogus is enlarged so that food escapes from his stomach and sits in his throat until he eventually is sick.

there are a number of causes for this, which if diagnosed we could look into - but none of which actually seem to give us a positive answer, as it’s pretty much incurable.

as i wrote this, our window cleaner came to the door and loki snaffled my crispbread with cheese off of the table - cue lots of huffing and puffing. after rubbing his throat, which made lots of gurgling, burping noises, i could physically see the sick coming into his mouth and him swallowing it again.  now, despite him being sick most of the crispbread, he’s still puffing and i can hear him chewing every now and again.

the bad thing is too- he snuck into my neighbours from the back garden when i got in and ate some of the cat’s food, so when meaty lumps came up i don’t know if that’s from his breakfast, or from the catfood - although going by the amount of weight he’s lost, it could be either.

we’ll know for certain tomorrow, and will hopefully be given new meds, or some kind of treatment plan, but as much as i know loki is a fighter, being unable to eat or drink properly - or to keep anything down - is so awful for him. he’s permanently starving - hence stealing any food he can get - and i have to say, i think he has lost pretty much all of the weight he can lose. you can see all of his ribs, all of his spine, and his two hipbones sit at least a few cm above where his fur is. also, when rubbing his throat, dandruff and dead skin practically coated my black boots with beige flakes.

i guess the whole way through we had been hopeful that there would be a cause, and then that the cause could be cured, and we’d have loki back eating normally and back to himself. the thing is, i guess, that if he can’t eat, then how long can we go on and how much worse is it possible for him to get?

i’ve done a bit of research, and on speaking to the vet, if this is the problem after all, then it’s unlikely that it will ever stop. she’s had experience with one great dane who had the condition, and despite surviving for several years, needed constant medication, supervision, and care, before he eventually died through aspiration pneumonia when he inhaled the food back into his lungs- something, given loki’s desperation to suck every piece of food back into him, that scares me every time he vomits even before i had heard of megaesophogus.

i know i’m reading too much into this and it’s not even been confirmed, but everything i learn about it, i can identify the symptoms exactly in loki. i guess i hope that it’s something else, but at the moment i think we are preparing for the worse. which is so, so horrible, given that only a week ago we thought we’d got him back from certain death!

i’ll keep you posted as to how tomorrow goes - we’ll know by mid afternoon, and can take it from there. there may be an operation that he can go through, but we’ll know more when they can identify how bad the situation is, and if there is anything they can do.

sorry guys just in that horrible place right now where, when will we know when he’s suffering, and what if he is already? hoping for some good news for the weekend. i guess all i can do is wait and see…

Fingers crossed for Loki and you Kate. I can’t imagine how terrible you must feel at the moment, I’m really hoping for good news for you.
Malc

the xray revealed that he does have megaesophogus. they’re currently testing for underactive thyroid and addison’s disease, both of which can be helped by medication, but it’s unlikely that the damage to his eusophogus will be repaired, or that his muscles will go back to normal.

it did show that he had no signs of aspiration pneumonia, and there were no visible masses in his chest - he was also sick after eating the food they gave him, so they did see the bulging neck first hand.

a locum from the vet school is coming to the surgery tomorrow, so they’re going to show her his case file and xrays, to see if she has any thoughts on moving forward. it might just be a case of trial and error - keeping him upright when eating, feeding him just little balls of food…

they’ll know more later today about the bloods. i guess though it’s good to finally have a name for what’s been happening, even if it doesn’t provide us with any answers…poor soul.

Kate, Loki is so lucky to have you looking out for him.  I’m really rooting for Loki that something can be done to alleviate this condition for him.  Best wishes to you, as you must be feeling low for Loki, it’s been going on for so long now.

So sorry to hear you’ve had the diagnosis confirmed. I guess at least now that you know what you’re dealing with. Hopefully the vet will have some suggestions tomorrow.

I didn’t know what megaesophagus was so I did a search on the net and one of the first things that came up was this:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/megaesophagus/

Good luck going forward, I really hope that you can find some way to help Loki.
Malc

Kate, I’m so sorry to hear your news about Loki, I am sending positive thoughts his way that they come up with a solution. I know you are doing everything for him and he could not be in better hands.
Big hugs to you all.
Marie x

Sorry to hear about the diagnosis for your boy. 
On the plus side its good that a vet from vet school is getting involved and hopefully will come up with something that will help.

hugs to Loki from Penny and Buddy

thanks everyone.

the addisons has been ruled out, but his thyroid is borderline so they’ve sent away for a more full diagnosis. i saw the xrays for myself yesterday, and it’s quite bad - they showed me one with just barium solution,which coats the eusophagus, and one with barium feed - which showed how it reacted with food inside. it’s HUGE!! pretty much the size of his neck, but thankfully it’s not interfering with his heart, although it’s expanding pretty close to it so we’ll need xrayed every few months to check the progress and make sure it doesn’t get any worse.

thankfully, some food is still getting to his tummy, which is a good sign.it basically just means that loki is now pretty much a special needs pet for the rest of his life. really bloomin special - otherwise this veggie wouldn’t have put herself through an hour of meat ball creation just to cover 2 meals worth of food! (certainly beats the roll as you go approach..yuck!)

the balls seemed to stay down last night, which is reassuring and he’s not had any problems with his breakfast - however, last night he was sick gruel type water quite a few times, which leads me to think that the other solution required is to find some kind of feeder bottle so he can drink from above, too..

i think knowing what it is gives us some reassurance - allan’s even determined to build him a bailey chair (well worth a google!) - although how on earth we’ll get a dog who won’t even cockroach or let us lift him up into one of those things is beyond me! and even though the way forward might be a smelly pain in the behind, i’m sure that plenty of visits to pets at home, some trial and error, and lots of patience and carpet cleaner later we’ll hopefully have loki raring to go…well, fingers crossed!

Sounds like you are doing your research, its a difficult situation to be in but your boy will hopefully adapt as you do. Keeping everything crossed you all find a way to deal with this difficult situation.
Marie x

i’m pleased to say that loki kept all of his food down, and water, all day yesterday - the first time ever in months. he slept right through the night - and we did, too! - and already seems much brighter.

he’s still getting used to having me hold his head up after he eats each meatball, and for 10 minutes after he eats, but i think he knows that it’s made him feel better, so it’s for the best. we’ve been giving him water from a syringe for now, but i’m popping to pets at home this afternoon so hopefully there’l be some kind of solution i can find there…

just so happy that he had a good night it makes me really positive that if we keep on this way, then he will put on some weight, have more energy and really be more like his old self - although i’m also picking up a ‘please don’t feed me’ tag for him for when we’re out in public, so he’ll obviously miss getting so many treats from kind hearted dog lovers!

hopefully this is the first good day of many

I’m so pleased that you seem to feel better Kate, probably cos you feel more in control, and can help Loki now you know what is wrong with him.  As I’ve said Loki is a lucky boy to have you and your OH (I checked out the Bailey chair in the Yahoo link).

I think there is someone on Lurcher Link makes Hi viz coats with wording on them - like Nervous dog do not approach etc.,  so if you think a coat might be good, I can try and find out for you.  It would be dreadful if someone unwittingly tries to feed him.

Now that you know what is wrong with him you can just imagine how sore his throat and muscles have been with all the vomiting - poor lad, no wonder he was exhausted.  Really hope you can have a stable period to build him up.  Lots of good wishes to your boy.